Adam Bede eBook

after all? It seemed so, for at the beginning
of November, Jonathan Burge, finding it impossible
to replace Adam, had at last made up his mind to offer
him a share in the business, without further condition
than that he should continue to give his energies to
it and renounce all thought of having a separate business
of his own. Son-in-law or no son-in-law, Adam
had made himself too necessary to be parted with,
and his headwork was so much more important to Burge
than his skill in handicraft that his having the management
of the woods made little difference in the value of
his services; and as to the bargains about the squire’s
timber, it would be easy to call in a third person.
Adam saw here an opening into a broadening path of
prosperous work such as he had thought of with ambitious
longing ever since he was a lad: he might come
to build a bridge, or a town hall, or a factory, for
he had always said to himself that Jonathan Burge’s
building business was like an acorn, which might be
the mother of a great tree. So he gave his hand
to Burge on that bargain, and went home with his mind
full of happy visions, in which (my refined reader
will perhaps be shocked when I say it) the image of
Hetty hovered, and smiled over plans for seasoning
timber at a trifling expense, calculations as to the
cheapening of bricks per thousand by water-carriage,
and a favourite scheme for the strengthening of roofs
and walls with a peculiar form of iron girder.
What then? Adam’s enthusiasm lay in these
things; and our love is inwrought in our enthusiasm
as electricity is inwrought in the air, exalting its
power by a subtle presence.

Adam would be able to take a separate house now, and
provide for his mother in the old one; his prospects
would justify his marrying very soon, and if Dinah
consented to have Seth, their mother would perhaps
be more contented to live apart from Adam. But
he told himself that he would not be hasty—­he
would not try Hetty’s feeling for him until it
had had time to grow strong and firm. However,
tomorrow, after church, he would go to the Hall Farm
and tell them the news. Mr. Poyser, he knew,
would like it better than a five-pound note, and he
should see if Hetty’s eyes brightened at it.
The months would be short with all he had to fill
his mind, and this foolish eagerness which had come
over him of late must not hurry him into any premature
words. Yet when he got home and told his mother
the good news, and ate his supper, while she sat by
almost crying for joy and wanting him to eat twice
as much as usual because of this good-luck, he could
not help preparing her gently for the coming change
by talking of the old house being too small for them
all to go on living in it always.